The Date of Birth
Lab Rats (episode 4 of Bloodride) starts in the bus with five people sitting together in their underwear and with a rat walking around them. We then cut to these five people on a rooftop as CEO of an important pharmaceutical company, Edmund, gives a speech about the success of their new anti-depressant drug. He thanks his lab technician, Philip and Abdi, the two secretaries, Oda and Margrethe and his wife Iselin. During a celebratory dinner, Edmund gets a little too familiar with Oda, which certainly doesn’t sit well with his wife then goes on to congratulate Abdi again. This seems to make Philip a little jealous. They ask to see the prototype but when he opens his safe, it’s missing. After speaking to his security guard, Edmund comes to the conclusion that one of his guests must have taken it. He confronts them and gets his security guard to search them one by one. After frisking each of them and not finding anything, he forces them to strip. They refuse to though so the guard pulls a gun out. With no results, he takes them to the lab and locks them in a glass room. He tells them that in order to escape they can press the combination on the lock, which is the same as his safe, which in turn will reveal who the culprit is. As paranoia quickly settles in, the group start to suspect each other. First Iselin, as she believes Ode is sleeping with her husband, then Philip accuses Abdi which ends in a fist fight. As they discuss Edmund and his methods, we find out how greedy and shady he is when he scammed some of his employees in the past, causing some to take their lives. They then turn their attention to Iselin who they think married Edmund for his money. After observing them on CCTV, Edmund returns and tells them to confess or he will kill them. He decides to leak gas in the room. They try to come up with a clever solution to leave the room which makes Edmund angry, causing him to turn the gas up. This leads to Ode rushing to the lock and typing the combination. We find out that she is the daughter of one of the employees who killed himself and she was seeking revenge. As he escorts her out, she blackmails him and tells him to forget this evening or she will have to tell his wife about their affair. After retrieving the prototype from her, which she originally managed to hide inside his coat pocket, he returns to his wife. She greets him with a gun and forces him in the glass room. The other four people arrive and Margrethe turns the gas on, despite him begging his wife to let him go. She tells him that the combination is her birthday and if he loves her he should know it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t remember it and collapses on the floor with foam coming out of his mouth. Lab Rats gives us an episode with a chilling “whodunit” premise as Edmund sees his prized possession going missing. Determined to get it back, he soon turns his evening into a humiliating dinner date, resulting into some very drastic and horrifying methods to get what he wants. Ultimately, his ways will cost him his life as his wife takes her revenge with quite the dark, humorous twist at the end. Lab Rats might not be the strongest episode of Bloodride, but the story is quite cleverly written and does keep us guessing until the end. It may not have the same shock factor as the others and feels a little predictable at times, yet still delivers a decent story with some good character interactions throughout.
